New Delhi: Naming Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav as its chief ministerial candidate, the opposition Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) Thursday sought to regain control over Bihar’s political narrative.
The announcement came following weeks of internal squabbling within the INDIA bloc over seat distribution, which nearly stalled its campaign.
A day earlier, senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot—dispatched to Bihar by the party’s high command as a troubleshooter—met Tejashwi Yadav and his father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad at their residence in Patna, setting the stage for the long-awaited declaration.
Addressing the first joint press conference of the INDIA bloc since the announcement of the election dates, Gehlot, the seasoned politician that he is, insisted that everyone in the alliance—including Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi—were clear from the beginning that Tejashwi Yadav would be its chief ministerial face.
“After taking the views of everyone, including (Congress President) Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, we are announcing Tejashwi Yadav as our chief ministerial candidate in this election. He is young with a long future ahead of him. It is a well-considered decision,” Gehlot said.
On more than one occasion, Rahul Gandhi and Congress’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru have sidestepped questions about formally naming Tejashwi as the alliance’s CM candidate, reinforcing the impression that the party was making other political calculations.
Congress insiders involved in the Bihar talks told ThePrint that the party tried to persuade the RJD leadership that entering the polls under Tejashwi Yadav’s leadership could alienate sections of the non-dominant backward castes. The RJD, however, refused to budge, leading the alliance partners to arrive at a decision—if elected, the opposition government would include more than one deputy chief minister.
On Thursday, one such name, Mukesh Sahni from the Vikassheel Insaan Party, was announced. Sahni is one of the deputy chief ministerial candidates.
Gehlot added that additional deputy chief ministers would be from other communities, in a bid to signal inclusivity and reach Muslims and less significant backward castes that make up a crucial part of the NDA’s support base.
At Thursday’s press conference of the INDIA bloc, the presence of the Indian Inclusive Party, which represents the Tanti-Tatwa and Pan communities, was also an indication of the alliance’s efforts to stitch a rainbow coalition. The party, led by I.P. Gupta, is fighting to reclaim the community’s status as the Scheduled Castes—something taken away from it after a Supreme Court order earlier this year.
Leaders of the Left parties—Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, Communist Party of India, and Communist Party of India (Marxist)—also attended the press conference in a bid to showcase unity.
Having neatly tied up the CM face question, the Opposition Thursday signalled that it would now try to corner the ruling NDA over the BJP’s non-committal stance on another term for Nitish Kumar as the CM—in the event of the ruling alliance’s victory.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that the NDA was fighting the polls under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, sidestepping a question on its CM face.
“We want to ask Amit Shah now, who is your chief ministerial candidate? It’s not enough to say you are contesting the election under his leadership. They said the same thing in Maharashtra, that they were contesting under Eknath Shinde’s leadership, and then made someone else the chief minister. The same applies here as well,” Gehlot said.
In the end, the Congress also had little choice but to accept Tejashwi Yadav as the Opposition’s chief ministerial candidate under the pressure of other partners in the Grand Alliance, including the Left parties and several smaller caste-based outfits.
For instance, Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of the CPI(ML)-L, said there was “no logic” in delaying the announcement when Tejashwi Yadav was the natural choice, given his roles as both chairperson of the INDIA bloc’s coordination committee and Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly.
For his part, despite the Congress’s evident hesitation, Tejashwi Yadav has consistently maintained that the announcement would be made before the election, insisting that the Opposition would not contest without a declared chief ministerial candidate.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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